Freedom of Expression
Starting in late 2000, authorities began tightening existing restrictions on the circulation of information, limiting the space available to academics, journalists, writers and Internet users. Attacks on academic researchers may have been partly a response to the January 2001 publication of the Tiananmen Papers, a collection of government documents spirited out of China which described in detail the role played by Chinese leaders at the time of the historic June 1989 crackdown.

In December 2000, Guangdong's publicity bureau told newspapers and journals not to publish articles by eleven prominent scholars. In June 2001, one of those named, economist He Qinglian, fled China after Chinese security agents seized documents, letters, her cell phone, and photos of America friends. Although her 1998 book, China's Pitfalls, had been widely praised by the Communist leadership for its exposure of corruption, she later angered authorities when she publicized the widening income gap in the country. Before she fled, the propaganda department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) banned publication of her works; she lost her reporting job at the Shenzhen Legal Daily; and was subject to round-the-clock-surveillance. In May, after the Yancheng Evening News published an interview with Ms. He, Chinese authorities ordered top staff to submit self-criticisms.

Between February and September 2001, four Chinese academics, all either naturalized U.S. citizens or permanent U.S. residents, were arrested and tried on charges of spying for Taiwan. Dr. Gao Zhan, a scholar at American University in Washington, sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, was permitted to return to the U.S within days after the conclusion of her trial; Qin Guangguang, a former editor and scholar, was granted medical parole and returned to the U.S. immediately after being sentenced to a ten-year term; journalist and writer Wu Jianmin was expelled from China following his trial in September; and Dr. Li Shaomin, a naturalized U.S. citizen teaching in Hong Kong, was deported from the mainland in July after a four-hour trial. Sichuan native Xu Zerong, a Hong Kong resident since 1987, detained in June 2000, was sentenced to thirteen years in prison in late January 2002.

Scholars were also affected when the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences rescinded invitations to foreign and Taiwan scholars to participate in an August 2001 conference on income disparities. In November 2000, authorities cancelled an officially sponsored poets' meeting in Guangxi province after it became known that dissident poets, some of whom had helped underground colleagues publish, were expected to attend. Three organizers were detained. In May, police in Hunan province raided a political reading club that had attracted teachers and intellectuals, and detained several participants including the founder.

Restrictions on information flows also affected HIV-AIDS research and reporting. In May, Beijing prohibited Dr. Gao Yaojie, who had helped publicize the role of unsanitary blood collection stations in the spread of the disease, from traveling to the U.S. to receive an award. Earlier, Henan health officials had accused her of being used by "anti-Chinese forces;" local officials, who often profited from the sale of blood, had warned her not to speak out. In July, village cadres refused to allow her to enter their AIDS-ridden villages.

Media regulations were also tightened. In November, the Party's top publicity official signaled a new policy when he told a meeting of journalists that "the broad masses of journalists must be in strict agreement with the central committee with President Jiang Zemin at its core," a warning repeated in January by Jiang himself. The same month, a Party Central Propaganda Department internal circular warned that any newspaper, television channel, or radio station would be closed if it acted independently to publish stories on sensitive or taboo topics such as domestic politics, national unity, or social stability. The regulations instituted a new warning system; after three citations, a media outlet was subject to closure.

By June, the Party had instituted a stricter regime. A decree expanded taboo content to include speculation on leadership changes, calls for political reforms, criticism of Party policies including those related to ethnic minorities or religion, and rejection of the guiding role of Marxism-Leninism and Mao-Deng theories, among many other categories. The decree forbade independent reporting on major corruption scandals, major criminal cases, and human and natural disasters and threatened immediate shutdown for violators. The government also ordered a nationwide campaign to educate journalists in "Marxist news ideology."

In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington, the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee Propaganda Department ordered news media to refrain from playing up the incident, relaying foreign news photos or reports, holding forums, publishing news commentaries without permission, or taking sides. Chinese youth had welcomed the attacks on Internet postings and officials said the restrictions were needed to prevent damage to U.S.-China relations.

Authorities routinely prohibited the domestic press from reporting on incidents it considered damaging to China's image, but permitted exposés when it suited the government's purposes. On September 8, 2001, former Xinhua reporter Gao Xinrong, sentenced to a thirteen-year term in 1998 for exposing corruption associated with an irrigation project in Shanxi province, wrote U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson asking that she intercede on his behalf after appeals in China were unsuccessful. Similarly, Jiang Weiping, a Dalian, Liaoning province journalist, who also exposed corruption, was arrested in December 2000 and tried in September 2001 on charges of "leaking state secrets." He received a nine-year sentence. After a military truck blew up in Xinjiang in November 2000, three journalists at two newspapers were punished for "violat[ing] news discipline and reveal[ing] a lot of detailed information" before Xinhua, the official news agency, printed the official line on the incident. News media in China are required to use Xinhua reports on any stories that local or central propaganda authorities deem sensitive. In June, Yao Xiaohong, head of news for Dushi Consumer Daily in Jiangxi province, was dismissed after reporting an illegal kidney transplant from an executed prisoner. In October, under pressure from central government publicity authorities, he was fired from his new job at the Yangcheng Evening News in Guangdong province.

Chinese authorities, however, did not always succeed in silencing the press. In March, after Chinese authorities insisted that a mentally ill man had caused an elementary school blast that killed over forty youngsters and teachers in Jiangxi province, the domestic press and Internet sites stopped reporting that the children had been involved in the manufacture of firecrackers. However, parents were able to circumvent the censorship and use the press and the Internet to establish the truth of their version, that firecrackers at the school had exploded. Premier Zhu Rongji, who had initially denied local accounts of child labor, was forced to renege.

Chinese authorities moved against publications as well as individual journalists. In May, a magazine called Today's Celebrities was peremptorily closed for printing articles about corruption and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Employees had to stop the post office from delivering copies of the offending issue. In June, in a move to change its character, authorities replaced the acting editor and other editorial staff at Southern Weekend (Nanfang Zhoumuo), China's most outspoken news publication. The magazine had published a series of articles blaming the government for problems in rural areas, reported on the school explosion, and featured an in-depth discussion of President Jiang Zemin's "three represents" thesis. The latter has been promulgated as Jiang's important contribution to the theoretical underpinnings of communism in China. Officials also closed the Guangxi Business Daily, which had operated for two years as an independent, privately-owned paper, when it refused to merge with the Guanxi Daily. In Jiangsu province, officials ordered the immediate suspension of the Business Morning Daily after it suggested that President Jiang's policies had advanced Shanghai's development at the expense of other cities. In September, Jiangxi province stopped 14 percent of its newspaper and magazines from publishing or turned them into internal reference material, thus precluding open subscription or circulation.

At the other extreme, when Beijing's interests coincided with independent press accounts, the government encouraged the reporting. Such was the case in July, when owners of the Nandan tin mine and local officials hindered accurate reporting of a flooding disaster at the site. They had been denying that the accident, which claimed close to one hundred lives, had occurred. Beijing has been trying to close down illegal mines and improve safety standards in others. In the Nandan case, local officials had ignored the violations because the mine contributed heavily to the county's coffers.

In August 2001, the State Council announced revised "Regulations on Printing," which included a sweeping provision forbidding publication of reactionary, erotic, or superstitious materials or "any other" material forbidden by the state. In early November 2000, courts sentenced ten people to prison terms ranging from five years to life for illegally printing and selling books about such topics as the Chinese intelligence community and the film community. In September, tens of thousands of Falungong publications were among some 500,000 documents confiscated in Anhui province.

The foreign press was also muzzled. In early March, after Time ran a story on Falungong, Beijing banned future newsstand sales of the magazine. In June, five security officers beat an Agence France-Presse reporter after he photographed a protestor outside a "Three Tenors" concert held to support Beijing's Olympic bid. In July, government officials in Beijing prohibited the U.S. CBS television network from transmitting video footage for a story about Falungong. Chinese authorities banned the October 29 issue of Newsweek when it ran a cover story on corruption. China International Television Corporation, which administers satellite broadcasting, informed foreign TV channels that as of January 1, 2002, they must transmit through a government "rebroadcast platform," a move making censorship of incoming broadcasts easier. China Central Television also reneged on a July agreement to air in full U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's Beijing interview. It cut one-fifth of his remarks, including those defending U.S. criticism of Beijing's human rights record.

Other moves to tighten information flows and increase government control included the construction of new jamming facilities aimed at preventing ethnic groups in Tibet and Xinjiang from receiving news from overseas "hostile radio stations." In May, the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television ordered all cable TV networks folded into provincial or municipal broadcasting networks. In July and August, the State Press and Publications Administration announced plans to set up publishing conglomerates to consolidate control of magazines and newspapers.

Stringent regulations on rapidly growing Internet use came into effect in November 2000. New regulations required general portal sites to get their news solely from state-controlled media unless they had received special permission to post news from foreign media or from their own sources, required that bulletin board services and chatrooms limit postings to approved topics, and made monitoring of postings routine. A month later, Chinese authorities increased the number of Internet police to more than 300,000. In January 2001, a new regulation made it a capital crime to send "secret" or "reactionary" information over the Internet. In February, software called Internet Police 100, capable of "capturing" computer screens and "casting" them onto screens at local public security bureaus, was released in versions that could be installed in homes, cafés, and schools. The product was designed in part to keep "unhealthy" information, such as cults, sex, and violence, off the Net. But even with some sixty sets of regulations in force, President Jiang in July decried the spread of "pernicious information" over the Web and called the existing legal framework inadequate.

By January 2002, the Ministry of Information and Technology had ordered service providers in "sensitive and strategic areas" to keep detailed records of who uses their services and at what times. Providers were also required to install software capable of screening and copying private e-mails containing "sensitive material," to end transmissions of such material immediately, and to report offenders to public and state security bureaus

Chinese regulations limited news postings on the websites of U.S.-based companies operating in China. The English chatroom of SOHU.com, partly owned by Dow Jones, posted a list of issues prohibited on the Internet by Chinese law, including criticism of the Chinese constitution, topics which damage China's reputation, discussion that undermines China's religious policy, and "any discussion and promotion of content which PRC laws prohibit." The posting continues: "If you are a Chinese national and willingly choose to break these laws, SOHU.com is legally obligated to report you to the Public Security Bureau." An internal America OnLine (AOL) memo recommended that if AOL were asked what it would do if the Chinese government demanded records relating to political dissidents, AOL staff should respond, "It is our policy to abide by the laws of the country in which we offer services."

In an attempt to control the proliferation of Internet cafes, Chinese officials stopped issuing new licenses while a "clean-up" operation to uncover evidence of banned sites or posting of subversive messages was underway. Beginning in April 2001, public security departments checked more than 55,000 sites. Also in April, four state ministries and departments, including the Ministry of Information Industry, promulgated "The Procedure for Managing Internet Service Business Sites." It barred cafés along a major Beijing thoroughfare and within 200 meters of key central party, political, and military organs, and middle and elementary schools, and within residential buildings. In October, officials announced that more than 17,000 cafes had been closed.

Internet bulletin boards, chat rooms, and online magazines, including university-based sites and those catering to journalists, were also closed. In June, Southern Weekend Forum, which allowed postings criticizing the firings at the Southern Weekend, was closed; Democracy and Human Rights Forum, produced by the website Xici Hutong was suspended for complaints about lack of press freedom. In August, two sites that criticized Jiang Zemin's stand on allowing private entrepreneurs to join the Party, the electronic magazine China Bulletin and the Tianya Zongheng forum were closed. Even People's Daily, the Party newspaper, was forced to remove a collection of articles by a Party member opposed to Jiang's initiative. In September, the State Council ordered the closure of Baiyun Huanghe, a bulletin board with 30,000 registered users at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, after students posted articles about events in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Once the bulletin board reopens, the university's Party committee will manage it. In mid-October, the Telecommunications Administration and Office of Information closed Zhejiang Media Forum, a bulletin board for journalists, and demoted the webmaster for allegedly leaking secrets, slandering leaders, and attacking government bodies.

Sites that were normally blocked, such as those of U.S. newspapers, were unblocked during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shanghai in mid-October, but blocked again as soon as the conference was over.

At least sixteen people were arrested or sentenced in 2001 for using the Internet to send information or to express views that the leadership disliked. In March, a court in Sichuan province sentenced Jiang Shihua, a middle-school teacher, to a two-year term for "inciting the subversion of state political power." In April, Wang Sen was detained for having exposed local trafficking in medicines; a Hebei province court sentenced Guo Qinghai, a bank employee, to a four-year term for subversion for posting pro-democracy articles on a U.S. web site; and veteran activist Chi Shouzhu, who had printed out pro-democracy writings from a web site, was detained. In May, public security officers detained Hu Dalin for helping his father maintain websites featuring the latter's leftist writings, and Wang Jinbo for libeling the police. The latter received a four-year sentence in December on subversion charges. In June, Liu Weifang, a small business owner in Xinjiang, received a three-year sentence for articles attacking China's leaders and government reform policies; former university professor Wang Zhenyong was arrested for using the Internet to distribute Falungong materials; and police detained Li Hongmin for e-mailing copies of the Tiananmen Papers to several friends. He was tried in July but no verdict was announced. In mid-September, a court in Shaoyang, Hunan province, sentenced Zhu Ruixiang, a lawyer and former journalist, to a three-year term for forwarding "reactionary" e-mails to a dozen friends. The city's Communist Party Committee increased his original nine-month sentence after review. In January 2002, in Wuhan, Hubei province, Lu Xinhua received a four-year sentence on subversion charges for reporting on human rights violations in China and criticizing President Jiang on overseas sites.

Four intellectuals, Yang Zili, Xu Wei, Zhang Honghai, and Jin Haike, detained in March 2001, were tried at the end of September on charges of subversion for organizing the Association for New Chinese Youth and publishing articles about political reform. To date, they have not been sentenced. Yang was known for his technical ability in evading government Internet controls. Huang Qi, detained in June 2000 and tried in secret in August 2001 on subversion charges for featuring articles about democracy on his website, had not been sentenced as of January 2002.

Political activists
Political dissidents continued to be persecuted. Two members of the banned China Democracy Party, Wang Zechen and Wang Wenjiang, were sentenced to six and four-year terms respectively in December 2000. Dissident Jiang Qisheng, held since May 1999 and tried in November 1999, was finally sentenced to a four-year term at the end of December 2000 for circulating a political essay calling for a candlelight commemoration and public mourning of those who died in the massacre in Beijing on June 3-4, 1989. Authorities also let it be known that interference with Beijing's Olympic bid would not be tolerated, sentencing activist Shan Chenfeng, who urged the International Olympic Committee to pressure China to release dissidents, to a two-year administrative sentence in February. Shen Hongqi, a lawyer, received a three-year sentence for an article advocating reform of China's political system. Police in Inner Mongolia detained activists associated with the Southern Mongolian Democratic Alliance, which seeks to promote Mongolian traditions and cultural values, but which the government accuses of "splittist" activities. In May, Dalai, also known as Bai Xiaojun, was detained for promoting the coming celebration of the birthday of Genghis Khan; in June, police detained Altanbulag, a young musician, for distributing materials relating to human rights and ethnic problems in Inner Mongolia. Authorities also banned works by two young Mongolian poets and in October detained one, Unag, for several weeks. In the Three Gorges dam area, four men, He Kechang, Ran Chongxin, Jiang Qingshan, and Wen Dingchun, were sentenced to two-and three-year terms on charges of disturbing pubic order. They had attempted to bring local corruption associated with residents' resettlement to the attention of central authorities.

Criminal Justice
On April 3, 2001, President Jiang initiated a three-month "Strike Hard" (yan da) anti-crime campaign. Stressing the need to safeguard social stability and the reform process, he asked that improvements in fighting crime be made with "two tough hands." The following day, Xiao Yang, president of the Supreme People's Court, announced that China's court would abide strictly by the law during intensified efforts to punish criminal elements. The pledge has been honored more in the breach, as the campaign has featured hastily processed cases, denial of due process rights, summary trials, harsh sentences, mass sentencing rallies, and an upsurge in executions. In Shanghai, for example, judges were ordered to take less time to review evidence in the pre-trial phase. A Supreme Court circular on April 12 stipulated that courts should mete out severe punishments to offenders, stressed the need for courts to act rapidly, and noted that capital cases should be made irreversible through ironclad evidence. Although the prohibition against the use of torture was reinforced by Luo Gan, the Chinese Communist Party's chief law and order official, forced confessions under duress were officially acknowledged. The practice is illegal, but evidence obtained through torture is admissible in court. Li Kuisheng, a prominent lawyer in Zhengzhou, Henan, was finally cleared of all charges and released in January 2001. He had been arrested in November 1998 after defending a client fighting corruption charges, and under torture had "confessed" to fabricating evidence.

Provinces and municipalities reported regularly on their compliance with the campaign. Their accounts included totals of those apprehended, sentenced, and executed, and information on the kinds of crimes committed. Capital sentences were imposed for some sixty offenses including, in addition to violent acts, economic crimes, drug trafficking, smuggling, arms dealing, racketeering, counterfeiting, poaching, pimping, robbery, and theft. During the first month of Strike Hard, some 10,000 people were arrested and at least five hundred executed. By the end of October, at least 1,800 people had been executed, at least double that number had received death sentences, and officials had announced they would continue the campaign at least through June 2002 with increased "intensity." By September, China's deputy procurator general called for a "strike always" campaign. The elimination of prostitution and gambling, a crackdown on superstitious activities, and better management of migrants joined the list of targets. In July, the Public Security Ministry distributed cash awards amounting to 1.15 million renminbi (over U.S.$140,000) to departments in five provinces in recognition of their Strike Hard efforts. In January 2002, The Minister of Public Security warned the police not to relax their efforts but rather to step up the campaign.

Despite the Strike Hard campaign, officials in some areas implicitly acknowledged unfairness in the criminal justice system. In October, Beijing courts began implementation of new rules on the presentation of evidence requiring that both sides present evidence in open court rather than to judges privately. In November 2000, Liaoning officials announced that prosecutions in some cities would be based on proof rather than confessions, thus guaranteeing suspects' right to remain silent during criminal interrogation. However, the following month, a senior National People's Congress member admitted that in many places forced confessions, extended detentions, and restrictions on the activities of attorneys for the defense were still problems. In January, the vice-president of the Supreme People's Court admitted to corruption within the legal system, including intentional errors of judgment, forged court papers, and bribe-taking. In June, the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued six new regulations to prevent violations in the handling of cases and acknowledged Communist Party interference in sensitive cases. However, in August, in Luoyang, Henan province, judges who heard the cases of twenty-three defendants charged in a fire that killed 309 people said they would not release their findings until they had talked to provincial leaders.

China's commitment to rule of law is being severely tested in two cases involving businessmen, Fong Fuming, a U.S. citizen, and Liu Yaping, a permanent resident. Mr. Fong, an engineer and power industry consultant accused of bribery and obtaining state secrets, was held without trial from February 28, 2000 to October 22, 2001. Fong's indictment was dated September 24, 2001, but the defense did not learn of it until two weeks before trial. Although the U.S. Embassy was informed the trial would be open, Fong's son was turned away when he arrived at court. As of late January 2002, no verdict had been issued.

Liu Yaping, held in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, on charges of fraud and tax evasion since March 2001, has been denied proper medical treatment despite a life-threatening brain aneurysm. On August 7, he was "released pending trial," but instead of being free to move about the city as was expected, he was transferred to a hospital and kept under twenty-four hour guard until mid-January 2002 when he was released and informed he could go to Beijing for medical treatment. However, as of late January, he still had not received the documents, including his passport, that would make travel possible. During his months in custody, Mr. Liu has had only very limited access to family members and to legal counsel. He has never been indicted.

Freedom of Religion and Belief
China continued to crack down on groups it labeled cults and on religious expression practiced outside the aegis of official churches. Falungong continued to experience the harshest repression, with thousands of practitioners assigned to "reeducation through labor" camps and more than 350 imprisoned, many for nothing more than printing leaflets or recruiting followers for protests. Throughout the year, recalcitrant practitioners were subjected to stepped-up physical abuse and psychological coercion. Unconfirmed but credible reports of practitioners dying in custody mounted. On June 11, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued a new interpretation of cult provisions in the Criminal Law to make it easier to punish practitioners on a wide variety of charges. The interpretation made incitement to injure oneself a capital offense, and it increased punishments for self-immolation, leaking state secrets, subversion, separatist activities, small-scale "assemblies," and small-scale publishing and distribution. There were reports in mid-August of forty-five followers tried and at least five sentenced to terms of up to thirteen years for offenses such as organizing the printing of leaflets and banners and recruiting followers for protests. In December 2001, the Beijing police arrested eleven members of a "criminal gang" for spreading Falungong propaganda. Ten members were administratively sentenced to reeducation through labor; the eleventh is in custody.

Authorities also targeted other so-called cults, among them Zhonggong, Xiang Gong, Guanyin Famin, Kuangmin Zhaimen, the Holy Spirit Reconstruction Church, Mentuhui, Nanfang Jiaohui, and the Local Church (also known as the Shouters), sentencing members and leaders, closing their offices, and seizing their publications. On January 28, 2002, a court in Fuqing, Fujian province, sentenced Lai Kwong-keung (Li Guangqiang in Mandarin), a Hong Kong resident, to two years' imprisonment for "smuggling" some 33,000 bibles to Local Church groups. The smuggled version was not one approved by Chinese religious officials. Yu Zhudi and Lin Xifu, from the mainland, received three-year terms. After U.S. protests, the original charge, "using an evil cult to damage a law-based society," was downgraded to running an "illegal business operation," but each man was fined the equivalent of U.S.$18,000. On February 9, Lai was permitted to return to Hong Kong after the court agreed that due to his medical condition he could temporarily" serve his sentences outside prison but under surveillance. A Local Church follower who organized songs and prayers in front of the courthouse also was detained until the trial concluded. Two other Local Church members from Anhui province have also been indicted on cult charges for proselytizing. After news broke in December that a Hubei province court had sentenced Gong Shengliang, leader of the Nanfang Jiaohui, to death on charges of "premeditated assault," rape, hooliganism, and using an evil cult to damage society, international pressure succeeded in delaying the execution so an appeal could be heard. Two other members reportedly received death sentences; another two received death sentences suspended for two years. If no further crime is committed, such sentences are generally commuted to life imprisonment. According to some accounts, several alleged rape victims were coerced into giving false testimony. A total of sixty-three members of the church have been charged. A court in Xiamen sentenced three mainland members of the Taiwan-based Holy Spirit Reconstruction Church to seven-year prison terms in January.

A few weeks before Christmas 2000, hundreds of "illegal" Protestant and Catholic churches and Buddhist and Taoist temples and shrines in Wenzhou were demolished. In March and April, several dozen house church leaders in Hubei province were detained; in May, twelve others were administratively sentenced in Inner Mongolia and twenty-three others released after they paid fines amounting to approximately U.S.$25 each. The Chinese government also instituted a special study group to bring Christianity "into line with socialism" through reinterpretation of basic beliefs. As part of the movement, the study group is looking into local church publications considered incompatible with the new interpretations.

The continuing government-ordered merger of Catholic dioceses, a move that went unrecognized by the Vatican, also signaled Beijing's determination to run the church in accord with its own needs. As a result of a student-teacher boycott of Chinese-controlled ordinations in early 2000, fewer seminarians were enrolled in the Chinese Catholic Theological and Philosophical seminary in Beijing. After political education sessions, some seminarians were dismissed or ordered to return to their dioceses. In October, after Pope John Paul II expressed regret for Catholic Church errors committed during the "colonial period" and expressed hope of normalized relations, Chinese religious officials responded by demanding that the Vatican first sever its ties with Taiwan, refrain from "using the pretext of religious issues to meddle in Chinese internal affairs," and apologize for last year's canonization of "foreign missionaries and their followers who committed notorious crimes in China." Detentions in 2001 included those of several elderly influential bishops and priests including Bishop Pei of Inner Mongolia, Bishop Li Hongye of Henan province, Father Feng Yunxiang in Fujian province, Father Liao Haiqing in Jiangxi province, and Bishop Shi Enxiang, Father Li Jianbo, and Father Lu Genjun from Hebei province. In April, Father Lu was sentenced administratively to three years' reeducation through labor for refusing to join the official Catholic Patriotic Association and continuing to preach the gospel and celebrate Mass. In May, the Chinese government leveled the grave of Bishop Fan Xueyan, a prominent "underground" bishop who died in 1992, to prevent Catholics from paying their respects.

Labor Rights
Reports of clashes between police and workers and farmers protesting layoffs, unpaid wages and benefits, corruption, and relocation problems continued throughout the year. Details as to the course of the incidents and the outcomes differed markedly. In December 2000, there were conflicting accounts of whether workers from a construction company in Heilongjiang were detained after some 2,000 of them blocked a railway line. One report of a dispute at the Guiyang Cotton Textile Factory in January 2001 said ten workers were hospitalized with injuries; local officials said the protests ended peacefully. In Changchun in September, either police or members of a private security force reportedly beat some one hundred distillery workers protesting the privatization of their company and lack of adequate compensation. Local authorities denied the allegations. In April, police in Yuntang village, Jiangxi province, arrested five villagers who had been leading a three-year protest against new taxes, then stormed the village killing two unarmed protestors and injuring some thirty-eight others. In October, in Qingdao, Shandong province, one hundred police officers detained protestors demonstrating against the city's failure to honor its commitment to provide appropriate housing for residents forced to relocate to make way for a real estate project.

Labor activists continued to be targeted. Hu Mingjun, Deng Yongliang, and Wang Shen were detained in May after helping steel workers in Sichuan province organize a protest to demand back wages. In one prominent case, Li Wangyang, imprisoned from 1989 to 2000 for his 1989 participation in the Shaoyang Workers Autonomous Federation, was sentenced for subversion in September to a new ten-year term after petitioning for compensation for mistreatment suffered in prison. Li's sister, Li Wangling, received a three-year administrative sentence on June 7 for publicizing her brother's case.

In October 2001, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress passed a revised Trade Union Law requiring enterprises with more than twenty-five workers to establish a union and prohibiting management personnel from holding important union positions. But only government-affiliated unions were mentioned in the law, and the right to strike was not guaranteed. In November 2000, a month after workers tried to form an independent union in a silk factory in Jiangsu province, Chinese authorities committed Cao Maobing, the union organizer, to a mental hospital. It took 210 days for him to be released.

Migrants
Also in October, authorities revised residential regulations to allow rural residents to apply for residence in some small cities and towns so long as they could first find jobs and homes. In larger cities, however, revisions to the existing permit system favored educated professionals, thus leaving the majority of migrants open to abuse by their employers, the police, and private security guards. For example, in some cities, prospective employers would have to obtain approval from local labor and social security bureaus before hiring waiters or shop assistants.

Guangdong province officials have been wrestling with problems in migrant detention centers. In response to incidents of serious mistreatment, a ruling was proposed at the end of November prohibiting extortion, rape, beatings, trafficking of women, confiscation of property, and forced labor.

In a further move to discourage migrants, many of their children were effectively barred from attending school. Most migrant parents, even if legally registered, cannot afford fees charged by regular city schools, forcing them to send their children to inferior "migrant" schools. Before the start of classes in September, officials closed fifty schools for migrant children in one Beijing district, forcing parents to choose between sending their children back to the countryside or keeping them out of school entirely.